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President Obama has been lobbying Congress to pass the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) known as Fast-Track, which will contribute to his ability to get through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sweeping trade agreement involving the U.S. and 11 other Asia-Pacific Nations. China is noticeably excluded from the negotiations. The Senate passed the TPA on May 23, 2015, and Rep. John Boehner is currently whipping the votes in the House in order to help Obama convince the Pacific nations to sign on, even though few in leadership have actually read the TPP. Congressman Paul Ryan is also on board.
The TPA would allow President Obama, and the succeeding president to wield a lot of economic power. If Congress passes the TPA, the president will be able to ask Congress for an up or down vote on any trade agreement he brings forth. No amendments or changes would be allowed. With the TPA in place, any trade agreement is much easier to pass in both houses.
The terms of the TPP are currently classified. Members of Congress may go to a secure room and view the terms of the agreement, but they may not take notes and are restricted from revealing the terms of the agreement. Several representatives have criticized the agreement as being harmful to U.S. interests. The criticism has been bipartisan.
Wikileaks to the rescue. It has released 17 documents that show part of the trade agreement would severely limit the ability of the U.S. and other nations to discriminate against foreign interests in favor of domestic business. Further, the structure contemplated is similar to the European Union, which is a giant leap toward a global governance scheme. Being bound to such a scheme would severely hinder the ability of the U.S to protect its own interests inside the United States.
Wikileaks says that corporations would be able to use the law in its current form to hold sway over governments, deciding whether laws promoting culture, protecting the environment or ensuring equal access to services were ‘unnecessarily burdensome’, or whether knowledge of indigenous culture or public services was essential to achieve ‘parity’.
“In other words, unaccountable private ‘trade’ tribunals would decide how countries could regulate activities that are fundamental to social well-being,” Wikileaks said.
Senator Jeff Sessions is one senator that is imploring the president to release the terms of the agreement, so that the public may have a chance to debate on legislation that would affect the economic interest of the U.S.
So far the president has ignored his request. Senator Sessions’ words are powerful:
“On May 6th of this year, I sent you a letter (enclosed) regarding your request for Congress to grant you fast-track executive authority,” Session wrote to Obama on Friday in a letter provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release. “Under fast-track, Congress transfers its authority to the executive and agrees to give up several of its most basic powers.
“These concessions include: the power to write legislation, the power to amend legislation, the power to fully consider legislation on the floor, the power to keep debate open until Senate cloture is invoked, and the constitutional requirement that treaties receive a two-thirds vote.
“The latter is especially important since, having been to the closed room to review the secret text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it is clear it more closely resembles a treaty than a trade deal.
“In other words, through fast-track, Congress would be pre-clearing a political and economic union before a word of that arrangement has been made available to a single private citizen.”
….
“The implications of this new Pacific Union are extraordinary and ought to be discussed in full, in public, before Congress even contemplates fast-tracking its creation and pre-surrendering its power to apply the constitutional two-thirds treaty vote,” Sessions wrote to Obama. “In effect, to adopt fast-track is to agree to remove the constitutional protections against the creation of global governance structures before those structures are even made public.
“I would therefore ask that you provide to me the legal and constitutional basis for keeping this information from the public and explain why I cannot share the details of what I have read with the American people. Congress should not even consider fast-tracking the transfer of sovereign power to a transnational structure before the details of that new structure are made fully available for public review.”
Prominent “Establishment” Republicans are teaming up with Obama to push through TPP, but since its terms are secret, it is impossible for the public to know whether this is really good for America. In order to slow this down and allow public dissemination of the information in the TPP, the TPA needs to be voted down in the House. Force the president to come forward with the terms of the TPP so the public may have an opportunity to review the proposed agreement. Let’s make them do a little better than they did with Obamacare.
Do we really want to go through this again?
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